Royals 5, Red Sox 3: Another failure in loss at Fenway

The Red Sox played poorly on defense, pitched poorly out of the bullpen and failed to produce enough offense in losing 5-3 to the Royals.

By Bill Ballou@BillBallouTG

BOSTON — One thing about this 2017 Red Sox season, for worse not better, the franchise is finding out just how valuable David Ortiz was for the 14 seasons before this.

Ortiz didn't play a position and never pitched — he wasn’t Babe Ruth, no matter how many walkoff homers he hit — so how much difference could he have made?

Enough, even if there is no way to prove that in court. Enough to win the occasional game that prevents a full-blown collapse, something Boston is in danger of being in now.

There is no way of knowing exactly how much they miss Ortiz, but as Dave Dombrowski and the Red Sox contemplate what they will have to do for their team to get well they may have to accept that there really is nothing they can do. The kind of everything-will-be-alright leadership they need is not something they can find at baseball’s July flea market.

Sunday afternoon’s 5-3 loss to the Royals was a result of failures in all three sections of the baseball grapefruit. Boston played poorly on defense, pitched poorly out of the bullpen and failed to produce enough offense. Since July 4, when the Red Sox peaked at 49-35 with a four-game lead in the AL East, they are 8-14 and have coughed up 4 1/2 games in the standings.

Boston caught a break Sunday when the Rays beat the Yankees, but that was one of those lose-lose games for the Sox since Tampa Bay is not that far behind.

It is one thing to drop a 5-3 game if you fall behind, 5-0, and then claw your way back to 5-3. It is another to lose like Sunday, relinquishing a 3-1 lead in the eighth inning.

Matt Barnes blew the save and was punished by being saddled with the loss, but he was betrayed by his defense and in particular by Xander Bogaerts.

Both Bogaerts and Mookie Betts, the presumed heart and soul of the next Red Sox powerhouse, have been lousy recently. Both, though, are probably too young to have so much responsibility on their shoulders, which is why having someone like Ortiz around would be nice.

Dustin Pedroia has seniority and plays hard, but doesn’t have the same game-changing presence of Ortiz and never will. Both Bogaerts and Betts have that potential but Sunday was a bad day for both.

Bogaerts’ error in the top of the eighth was game-changing, but in the wrong way. His misplay on Lorenzo Cain’s grounder leading off not only put a runner on first, it introduced a here-we-go-again feeling to the inning. Sure enough, there they went again with KC scoring four runs.

“All of a sudden, there’s life,” John Farrell said, analyzing how the error affected everything that followed, “for a team that’s been aggressive, that has momentum. All of a sudden there’s a crack. It changed the whole complexion of the inning.”

These are bad days for Bogaerts, who was hitting .337 at the end of May with an eye on making a run at the American League batting title. Since then his average is .229 and his defensive play is suffering, too. Sunday’s error was his fifth in about half a month since the All-Star break and he has cost the team four unearned runs.

Betts popped out to shallow center with the bases loaded to end the game, which meant he stranded the tying runs in scoring position. Betts is 3 for 27 in Boston’s last six games and his average is down to .269. He was hitting .303 at the same time last year.

Nearly forgotten in the maelstrom of failure created in the eighth was that Sox starter Drew Pomeranz had a nice game for nought. He left with two outs in the seventh holding a 3-1 lead but the bullpen could not preserve the win for him.

There are no two more opposite personalities on the team than David Price and Pomeranz, who has proven himself incapable of rancor during his time with the Red Sox. The blown save was the third in his 21 starts this year. A little more help from the bullpen and he’d be 13-4, not 10-4.

“The bullpen’s been good all year,” Pomeranz said. “It’s just part of baseball. It happens.”

So, Dombrowski’s deadline checklist consists of finding players to improve his offense, defense and pitching. He can either concede that that’s just too much to ask and go with what he’s got. Or he can see what he can do about finding the next Bambino, to date the only player in baseball who could do all three things.